and boost have been among the most widely studied phenomena in social psychology. Perhaps the most astonishingfinding in these studies is the susceptibility of individuals to even a single, one-sentence, subtle suggestion of a group stereotype. Imagine, then, the boost you might derive if belief in your group’s superiority were part of the culture you grew up in, instilled by your parents, grandparents, and community from the day you were born.
—
T HE CULTURAL BURDEN BORNE by African Americans—along with their susceptibility to stereotype threat—is thrown into sharp relief by the fact that black immigrants are often free of it, at least when they first arrive. In her gripping memoir
The House at Sugar Beach
, the
New York Times
journalist Helene Cooper, a Liberian American, describes the choice made by her ancestors, free American-born blacks, to leave the United States for Liberia—a choice she sees as having armed her, by sheer fortuity of birthplace, with a worldview different from that of many American blacks:
Because of that choice, I would not grow up, 150 years later, as an American black girl, weighed down by racial stereotypes about welfare queens. . . . Instead, [they] handed down to me a one-in-a-million lottery ticket: birth into what passed for the landed gentry upper class of Africa’s first independent country, Liberia. None of that American post–civil war/civil rights movement baggage to bog me down with any inferiority complex about whether I was as good as white people. No European garbage to have me wondering whether some British colonial master was somehow better than me. Who needs to struggle for equality? Let everybody else try to be equal to me.
Culturally and psychologically, “let everyone else try to be equal to me” is worlds apart from “I’m just as good as other people.” It’s theexpression of a superiority complex, and in a society where negative stereotypes are widespread, the confidence it confers on a minority group can be extremely valuable.
This is certainly true of Nigerian Americans. Among West Africans, thestereotype of Nigerians as “arrogant” is common. But the overwhelming majority of Nigerian Americans are not merely Nigerian. They areIgbo or Yoruba, two peoples renowned—and often resented—throughout Western Africa for being disproportionately successful and ethnocentric. The Yoruba boastan illustrious royal lineage and a once great empire. Upstarts by comparison, the entrepreneurialIgbo are often called the “Jews of West Africa.” Chinua Achebe, the late Igbo-Nigerian author and winner of the Man Booker Prize, warned ofthe “dangers of hubris,” “overweening pride,” and “showiness” among the Igbo—and of other Nigerians’ “resentment” against them.
Because of these superiority narratives, the theory of the Triple Package would predict that black immigrants should be able to fend off negative stereotypes better than African Americans can. Again, empirical evidence confirms this result. In arecent study of more than 1,800 students at twenty-eight American selective colleges, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors, first- and second-generation black immigrant students did not suffer the same stereotype-threat effects that American black students did. And as many similar studies have shown,the more strongly black immigrant students identify with their specific ethnic origins, the better they perform.
Newcomers from Africa and the West Indies frequently point towhat they perceive as defeatism among African Americans, identifying this mind-set as an obstacle to black success. In the words of one business-school graduate, born in the United States to two Nigerian parents:
Perception is very important, and I think that is what holds African-Americans back. If you start thinking about or becoming absorbed in the mentality that the whole system is against us, then you cannot succeed. . . .Nigerians do not have this. I feel
—
T HE CULTURAL BURDEN BORNE by African Americans—along with their susceptibility to stereotype threat—is thrown into sharp relief by the fact that black immigrants are often free of it, at least when they first arrive. In her gripping memoir
The House at Sugar Beach
, the
New York Times
journalist Helene Cooper, a Liberian American, describes the choice made by her ancestors, free American-born blacks, to leave the United States for Liberia—a choice she sees as having armed her, by sheer fortuity of birthplace, with a worldview different from that of many American blacks:
Because of that choice, I would not grow up, 150 years later, as an American black girl, weighed down by racial stereotypes about welfare queens. . . . Instead, [they] handed down to me a one-in-a-million lottery ticket: birth into what passed for the landed gentry upper class of Africa’s first independent country, Liberia. None of that American post–civil war/civil rights movement baggage to bog me down with any inferiority complex about whether I was as good as white people. No European garbage to have me wondering whether some British colonial master was somehow better than me. Who needs to struggle for equality? Let everybody else try to be equal to me.
Culturally and psychologically, “let everyone else try to be equal to me” is worlds apart from “I’m just as good as other people.” It’s theexpression of a superiority complex, and in a society where negative stereotypes are widespread, the confidence it confers on a minority group can be extremely valuable.
This is certainly true of Nigerian Americans. Among West Africans, thestereotype of Nigerians as “arrogant” is common. But the overwhelming majority of Nigerian Americans are not merely Nigerian. They areIgbo or Yoruba, two peoples renowned—and often resented—throughout Western Africa for being disproportionately successful and ethnocentric. The Yoruba boastan illustrious royal lineage and a once great empire. Upstarts by comparison, the entrepreneurialIgbo are often called the “Jews of West Africa.” Chinua Achebe, the late Igbo-Nigerian author and winner of the Man Booker Prize, warned ofthe “dangers of hubris,” “overweening pride,” and “showiness” among the Igbo—and of other Nigerians’ “resentment” against them.
Because of these superiority narratives, the theory of the Triple Package would predict that black immigrants should be able to fend off negative stereotypes better than African Americans can. Again, empirical evidence confirms this result. In arecent study of more than 1,800 students at twenty-eight American selective colleges, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors, first- and second-generation black immigrant students did not suffer the same stereotype-threat effects that American black students did. And as many similar studies have shown,the more strongly black immigrant students identify with their specific ethnic origins, the better they perform.
Newcomers from Africa and the West Indies frequently point towhat they perceive as defeatism among African Americans, identifying this mind-set as an obstacle to black success. In the words of one business-school graduate, born in the United States to two Nigerian parents:
Perception is very important, and I think that is what holds African-Americans back. If you start thinking about or becoming absorbed in the mentality that the whole system is against us, then you cannot succeed. . . .Nigerians do not have this. I feel
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